Two Reasons That You Could Sabotage Your Child’s Smile

Your smile is the greatest and most natural beautifier. However, getting a perfect smile, just like all things in life which are highly-coveted, is often by chance. If by chance, you get all of the best genes, then chances are that you’ll be wearing a smile that can turn heads and make passersby smile themselves. But there’s another reason for why you may have a bad bite, and that could be attributed to your habits as you are growing up.

Below are a couple of the things you may have done as kid, or your kid is doing now, that led to the development of bad bites or malocclusions.

Thumb Sucking

Thumb sucking is something which is rather common among toddlers and young children. To some, this act serves as a form of emotional security which makes a child feel more comfortable in and secure during stressful situations. On the other hand, thumb sucking can also help to get rid of any pain or discomfort which is often associated with teething. However, the problem with thumb sucking is that it pushes your two front teeth leading to an open bite. Luckily, this does not have to be permanent. On the other hand, if the child kicks the habit before his or her permanent teeth begin to erupt, then the bite should be corrected naturally.

Losing Teeth Too Soon

Your milk teeth serve as space markers for the upcoming permanent teeth. What this means is that when a milk tooth is lost, this will serve as a cue for the permanent tooth directly beneath it to erupt. However, the problem begins when the tooth is lost too early in the game. With the permanent tooth not yet ready to exfoliate, then what happens is the space left by the tooth will be nursed for a longer period of time, and this would develop in the succeeding permanent tooth erupting somewhere else. This now leads to a very crowded arrangement of teeth and a bad bite. Your child’s dentist can always prescribe space maintainers in order to keep the space, and prevent the neighboring teeth from floating into that vacated space.

Assessing for Bad Bites

Your child should have his or her bite assessed when there is a good mix of permanent and milk teeth. This will allow your dentist to accurate predict the resulting bite which will develop as well as suggest options to correct the bite.